China’s ‘red education’ history tours and the rise of communist cosplay
For the owner of a company that rents Red Army uniforms to tourists, business is booming
If anyone can best tell the scale and intensity of China’s “red education” drive to promote loyalty to the ruling Communist Party, it’s businessman Yu Meng.
The 36-year-old runs the largest Red Army uniform rental business in Jinggangshan, a city dubbed the “cradle of the communist revolution” deep in the mountains of Jiangxi. Last year alone, his company rented uniforms to 256,000 people taking part in red ideology study tours.
Yu started the Xiangganbian Red Army uniform company 10 years ago. But it’s only in the last three years that the business has really taken off, thanks to the relentless push of patriotic education by President Xi Jinping. Xi has said he wants “faith” in communist rule to be passed down to a new generation as “red DNA”.
Yu’s company now has a 60 per cent share of the city’s booming military uniform rental industry.
“Five to 10 years ago, most of the visitors were tourists, and not a lot of them wore Red Army uniforms,” he said. “But in the last two or three years, most of the visitors we see are taking part in study tours.
“It has to do with the government policy direction after the 18th party congress [in 2012],” he said.
